Category Archives: Paper Soap

December 12, 2023 · 10:41 am

00410308

“You’re going to have to leave soon, darling. Clients showing up, 2 of them. My partner in crime Daisy’s sick today. Darnit,” she faked, since she was directly responsible for the sickness as stated. “It’s just a blasted shame.” She stomped out her cigarette on the leaf strewn patio floor. New habits haven’t changed.

“Just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”

“I *mind*… but I guess I have a little time left.” She scans the horizon with her 20/10 vision, youthful eyes still in place. Very little smoke had gotten into them yet. She sees no one approaching her from the distance, across the pool, beside the school. “Always come down Twig Lane so I can see you,” she requested to all the men with desires. And she was still quite fetching. Business was good. No need to poach Daisy’s clientele if she didn’t have a good reason.

“You said Greene’s is the name of the motel, but the sign said Lucky.”

“They haven’t gotten around to changing it. Anything else?” She was becoming impatient. Who was this stranger in town with such curiosity? Said she was a relative of mine, a cousin. Just distant enough to not easily be identified. Who doesn’t have some kind of cousin named Wanda?

“It’s just…”

“Hold on hold on,” Octavia says, formerly smoking hand held out like a stop sign. “Someone’s coming — looks like a Mouse. No, make that, looks like Mouse. But you didn’t hear it from me. Now…skedaddle youngster… Wanda… *whoever* you are.”

“I’m your cousin,” doubled down Marsha disguised as a fictional one named Wanda but who inside was actually Alice Tart, moved back in time to the day of her conception. She’s aiming to change the aimer. She doesn’t want a father who’s a villain of all villains. Better it be Mouse. *Has* to be Mouse.

“And… there’s the other one… not far behind. Get outta here. Git git git!”

Marsha had no choice. *Alice* had no choice. She, through Marsha’s body wearing her clothes, moved away from her mother back through the gates, intent on finding a room to stay in.

WAIT. She turns. She had to see her younger father through the eyes of Marsha. Prefiguring his need for a cane, he points to what excites him in the moment.

Axis walks into the main office, intending to check in his copper red hair with Wilma the day clerk. Now was her chance, she realized.

She could… shove him through the green door over there. Yeah, that’s it.

Or hit him with the green phone (reader’s choice).

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December 12, 2023 · 9:57 am

00410307 (the 1st Haze County entry (!))

Station attendant Ginger directed Marsha to a large square map hanging on the back wall. “So it is Lucky,” she said to herself, looking at the name of the nearby motel on the map. Just down the tracks as it turned out.

But in the unaltered reality, it wasn’t.

Mouse was right all along.

—–

“NC,” she said, staring up again. Could be either one still.

And then she walked inside the property to see what up. A considerably younger Octavia Tart awaited her appearance.

(to be continued)

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December 11, 2023 · 3:21 am

the movement of ONE

Axis shifted the name himself after satisfying his needs at the Lucky, concealing the missing letter. No need to be so obvious about it.

So Marsha “Pink” Krakow changes it back and arrives on same, aiming to do Alice Tart’s will and set things right again. She wore Alice’s “I am a Demo” sweater all along as a constant reminder of her mission in Paper-Soap, the Paper part fully yielded to Soap now, two halves separated out again in the passage through the tunnel. As she stood before the train, the symbolic missing letter now lay beside the track, with the reappearance of Gee Cat naturally coming along with it. Here.

“Can I help you Missi?”

“*Gee*. You *scared* me,” she spoke over to the large, upright orange cat appearing as if from the blue behind her.

“Yes, Gee scared you,” he spoke matter-of-factly in a regular type voice. “Gee the cat,” he announced himself.

“Wait. Your *name* is Gee? Like the letter you’re beside right now. I want to get this clear.”

“Gee is the cat. G is the letter. That is correct all around, then.” Is she the ONE? he thinks here, expecting such any day now. He checks the name on the train. Not yet, then SIGH.

“I’m looking for someone… or something. Greene’s Motel. Maybe it’s the Lucky Motel with a green door in the front office I’m still not sure. Woman with the last name of Tart and maybe a first name of Octavia. That’s all I’ve got. Can you help me? Gee?”

“Gee will help,” and he got to it, entering the station to talk to Wanda Berta Shirley. Make that: Laverne. Fresh from a closed down Barrow County beer factory, dreams of retiring in the bottling business shattered. But most people know her as Ginger.

(to be continued)

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December 10, 2023 · 9:37 pm

00410304 (104)

Couple of battered suitcases left behind but nothing in them as she checked. Clients should be arriving pretty soon; better make herself prettified, as she liked to say. *Remember*, the taller, richer one *doesn’t* like the blue rouge, she reminded herself. And of course that code he goes by to sanctify all this. Oil me up, I suppose.

She’s staking her claim to the room. Daisy Chain can go to hell for all she cares. Pills in her staff meeting breakfast for a knock out punch, BAM! She can works hers and Daisy’s together. She’s not that old yet: only 18 going on 38. Now if she could only remember the year. ’36? ’39? She decided to split the difference and settle on herself. Still before the Axis took control.

Town school superintendent Axis walks through the 104 door, taking control. “Mouse here yet?” He’d checked in his copper red hair at the main desk with Wilma the day clerk — no need for that inside. He could be who he was here. An older, balding man destined for chancellorhood, he felt.

“Not yet,” she answered. Octavia always fancied Axis among her townspeople clientele. Certain a step above, say, a baker, a farmer, a grocery store owner in the swampland. He owns an actual, bona fide *house*. Mouse — that’s the other one’s name: Mouse — might be richer and also have a house but he’s not as devilishly handsome. And the emblazoned cross across his chest he bears helps with this judgment too. Man of God he’s said about himself. Mouse was obviously devoted instead to science; even brought a beaker and test tube along for one of their sessions, and not to decorate the tree in the room, he said. “This time,” — like he was going to bring them again during the holiday season which was in full swing now, hmm. What does he suppose he can test with all *this*. She didn’t like to think about it; didn’t want to ponder the possible weird requests that could come along with such things. Daisy’d warned her about stuff like that. Maybe she was too harsh with the drugs; maybe she couldn’t pull off this 2-n-1 thing she planned today. If it wasn’t Mouse and his eccentricity she figured there was no way it could work.

—-

“I’ll finish up here Mouse; you can go back to your house now,” still-in-control Axis said later on. Octavia needed more than the doctor could provide.

—–

“We’ve gone back and changed time, Marsha,” said Alice, seeing the results, “but now *Axis* is instead my father. Villain of villains!”

“He’s not that bad.”

“I guess you’re telling me *Hitler* wasn’t that bad.”

“He invented the VW Bug — or something,” she attempted to justify, then realized this was wrong, all wrong. And where was her yellow Bug? Still orange? Still in Amiable? She made a note to herself to check. After all this dialog here was worked out.

“We have to go back. Daisy *wasn’t* sick that day in April’s May.”

“I believe that would have to be November’s December, Alice — holiday season and all. The beakers and test tubes on the tree. Remember?”

“I don’t remember *nothing* because it didn’t *happen*. I’ll MAKE it not happen.”

“Again?” Marsha said, staring into the other girl’s eyes who was still wearing the same “I’m not a Demo” sweatshirt as herself, same holey denim jeans.

“Again,” she said back firmly across the gap, closing it for the second time.

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December 7, 2023 · 6:02 am

one last sensory experience

“There. That was me, Alice. A wolf caught in the bright headlights.” CHANGE

Lazy girl Marsha “Pink” Krakow had seen and heard and felt and tasted and touched enough in Paper-Soap. Back to Cass City to wrap this section up, she said in her mind. Just after she finishes nomming down this delicious sewer popcorn.

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December 5, 2023 · 4:21 pm

00410214

They continued their imaginary conversation at the purple shack over at Bill’s swamp. The chest was still there with the photos, errand notes, love letters, etc. stashed safely within. She had to take Mouse’s word for it because she still couldn’t get inside the thing, couldn’t find the key anywhere on the premises. She kept thinking about the huge Arabic number back on the pinball machine in Cass City as if it was pinned to his chest. Deception, she knew. Lies.

“Swamp Shack Purple here use to be Swamp Shack Brown,” she said while she was eating provided soup and he was drinking the house wine. “Explain.”

“You’ll have to ask Robert.”

“O-kay. Then where’s the key? To the chest I mean, obviously.”

“Did you check the sink? Sometimes things get caught in the drain. Doris Drain.”

Why did he say that? she asked herself, but got up to check anyway. “Wait here,” she requested with more seriousness in her tone. “Don’t *move*.”

“Why there’s not even a drain to this sink!” she exclaimed through the wall at him. “What gives?”

“She must have had it removed!” he answered from the living room. Then was gone.

“She had it *what*?” No answer. She rounded the corner. The imaginary visit, so vivid in the moment, was over. She sat back down, finished her soup. No Mouse no wine no cane opposite her, no nothing. But the numbers remained.

Combination! she realized. Eureka appeared as if from the blue but actually it was red. Eureka could shift her form into any shape. And she chose Robert, the lead mystery man.

“You!”

(to be continued)

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December 5, 2023 · 8:48 am

00410213

“Why didn’t you tell me about the chest, father?” she imagined asking him later at the same motel, mother with a new client by now. Father Pritchard, a different kind of father, one with a holy vest chained to a cross he never asked for; was just in the family business, his father a father, *his* father a father, so on. This is a way to exact his flesh, pound-for-pound.

He made googly eyes with this, which gave her the answer. He was thinking about the past even now.

“Ahh, so… mmm…”

“Boyys,” he issued. “I worshiped the boyys. They just made me… blow up (!).”

“Combustible. Like oxygen.”

“I suppose.” He was clear for one minute, now muddied again. The whites of his eyes had narrowed into slits like snakes.

“So you *couldn’t* be my father.”

“No,” he admitted. “No, I couldn’t be.”

Must have been *Robert*, she realized. She said this to her father who was now not her father, at least biologically. Psychically perhaps “yes” still. She hadn’t given up on him just because of the Big Reveal — opening up the chest. He was with her mother just not in a strict biblical sense. Not like Father Pritchard now. More on-the-spot irony.

“Swamp Fox, right.” We better end there.

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December 4, 2023 · 6:20 pm

00410211

She learned the truth about the chest that day. Octavia’s.

Borneo chest. Square. Iowa. Flying — planes (and lines (and points)).

He was… fascinated with that chest! she realized. What’s inside? Pictures of Octavia. Letters of love. Notes: “don’t forget to pick up milk at Speedy Mart before our rendezvous tonight” (etc.).

—–

She went back to her old home in (Paper-)Soap to check Mouse’s new info against her mother’s.

“Greene’s Motel,” she started. “That’s where the doctor — my father — said I was conceived.”

“Well there’s a green *door* inside. Along with a green phone. Maybe that’s what he was referring to.” Her Maw, Octavia Tart III, wondered if the old man perhaps was getting senile and confusing names with each other, overlapping colors where they shouldn’t be. Always fascinated with hues the good doctor was. Maw Tart wasn’t surprised that her old lover was involved with fellow doctors named Gray(son) and Brown, for example — fits the pattern. “Blue?!” he said one time to her, rubbing off the rouge she just put on that morning thinking it would please him. “I said red!” he said. Purple at the least, he thought to himself. She believed that was the day Alice came along. The door to her standard 104 room was locked for some reason — had to do it out back. Perhaps it was occupied, she realized now. Yes, Daisy was working that day as well. Made sense suddenly. Alice was conceived in the alley because of Daisy (she imagined). She’d have to mark it in her “Little Book of Vengeance” against the fellow hooker, now going on 12 (or 32) years at the Lucky Motel. 12 (or 32) years is too long — can’t call her Lucky now. Her: 6 (or 26). She still has some luck left but it’s running out quick. Mouse was a way out but wasted. No luck with Robert either, the owner of the swamp. Or so she thought.

“What about Claude? The golden robot?”

“What *about* Claude?” Maw Tart got tense all of a sudden, felt a surge of the unknown and probably unknowable coming, like in the Dark Days. Before the Coming of Jesus into her heart.

“Well… I mean, he — I mean, *she’s* in Cass City now. And he’s fiddling with her.”

“I bet he is,” spouts Maw Tart through the fear. Pleasure robots, *pheh*.

“No. I mean, he’s tinkering with her. Like in her parts.”

“My statement still stands.”

“*No*. Like… *reprogramming*. What do you know about the numbers 1886 and 1936?”

“I know they’re *years*.”

“50 years. Between them, I mean.”

“I’m counting, let’s see, 3822,” Maw said, showing off her math skills and being difficult at the same time. The fear was standing just behind her now, threatening to reach into her chest with its shadowy paw and pull out her savior.

“He’s interested in hues. Red to yellow to green to blue. Or something.”

“Hues, *huh*.”

“He’s doing *something* to that robot. He’s spying on his prospective replacements, Maw.”

“HUH — wish *I* had a replacement. Then I could go work at the beer factory they opened up in Barrow County; become like Laverne and Shirley like I always wanted to.”

Alice didn’t have the heart to tell her mother. Barrow County was no more. She’d been sending her postcards from the Void.

(to be continued)

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December 4, 2023 · 5:02 pm

00410210

“She’s gone now.”

“She certainly had important information to relay to us.” And lo and behold his 50 year old cold was gone (!).

Time to move back to the present as inevitably as red turns yellow turns green turns blue. 1936. Or thereabouts.

—–

Dr. Mouse confessed to his daughter Alice about what happened. “Why didn’t you just pay for an abortion?” she queried in the diner the next day. Mouse had to run off to an appointment the day before or certainly they would have caught up then. Interview with another doctor, a more promising one than Grayson and especially Brown so he couldn’t miss it. Apologized and was on his way, leaving Alice to the pinball machine herself; left alone in the city once more. She peered up at the last score before inserting a quarter: 28064212. Lunar month. Deception. The Sun nowhere to be found. Gloomy day.

The huge Arabic number disappeared as her own scoring began.

Sunnier now. A boy in the far distance stops revolving around 10 to 13 to 10 etc. etc. and becomes 18 for a spell. He asks out the girl down the street he’s had a crush on forever. Now that he can speak to her eye to eye he figures: why not. Forecast doesn’t call for rain until Thursday. And today was Munday; time for maybe even several dates with tall, blonde Sarah. Or was it Nikki?

Back to Mouse and daughter Alice in the diner booth. “Octavia,” he hesitated, “… we had a different relationship than…” Did he want to say “clientele”? He just decided on the “others.” Her other men, her other clients, Alice understood. “She knew the man who owned the swamp, the one the psychic children in town were always altering and changing. This made her special in my eyes. The man’s name was…” He suddenly couldn’t remember, although he’d thought of him a thousand times since Alice’s conception on an old mattress in an alley back of Greene’s Motel (he assumed). “Robert,” he then recollected. He tried the name out on Alice.

“I don’t know that name,” she returned. “Do you mean Bob Levarbe? Leverber?” she tried again herself. “Levargee.”

“Bill,” he suddenly recalled. And a last name. Lavosier! He felt the air around him become heavier and more combustible. BOOMB! he recalled. He got too close.

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July 25, 2023 · 5:52 pm

00390306

She’d lost her landmark so she just teleported into the center of the sim. She knew her mother would be nearby.

“Lost again?” she said upon seeing Alice materialize about 15 feet away: 128/128 she knew; wasn’t uncommon for someone to beam in there. “Well come over and sit beside me and be found again, saved even. I want to tell you about–”

“Don’t start Mother. I’m not here for religion.”

Pause. “Then what are you here for? You know I’m working. Joe Smo due any moment. There.” She nods toward the horizon, pretending to see someone. “Office Johnston coming this way, along with Preacher Ben and Farmer Louis. All out for a good time, all sinners underneath holy cloth and whatnot — I don’t know, maybe the caffeine talking, child. So what gives? Money?”

“*No*. It’s not always about money.”

Maw takes a drag off her cigarette, still staring into the distance. “Where you staying now, girl? You haven’t been home–”

“6 weeks, I know.”

Maw takes a final drag, drops the half smoked cig to the leaf strewn cement and steps on it. “Don’t guess you’re going to tell me where you’ve been, hmm. Ashamed of your Maw, huh. Ashamed of what she’s become. Well, I have *dreams*.”

“I know, Maw. Lavern and Shirley. Just thinking about that this morning.” Alice tries to look where her mother is looking. Still nothing — no one there.”

“Rumors of a beer factory (being built) up in Barrow County, I’ve heard. Could be moving again soon, child. But what do you care? You don’t have any friends here. Not any more. Who did they lock up last week, the psychic children and all. Wanda? Gloria? Wait — they’ve been gone a while from me. Beach combers. Well — at least *you* stayed.” She thought about Alice’s recent absence from her side again. “Kind of I suppose. Soo…”

“I’m glad of the factory, if it’s true.” Alice really was. She wanted her mother to fulfill her dream. And business had been slow here lately, she knew, what with the law enforcement crack down. Crack came first, along with the rest of the hard drugs. Then it moved to prostitution and liquor, perhaps in that order. The officers were still loosey-goosey on the whoring but it had already scared most of the men away, her regular clientele and such. Bob the Baker — hadn’t been by in a week. Joe the Smo — wait, I made him up. Dennis the, not Menace — no, a farmer. Wait…

“I came here because of Robert,” Alice uttered while I was still spacing out about nonsense, making up names, making up games the made up names play. Tennis for Dennis, golf for Rolph, archery for Yvette Archer (Archer, Y.). “Robert, huh?” Maw finally responded, thinking about lighting another one. “Robert Johnston I suppose.”

“*No*. Not *him*. Robert Leferber.”

“Is that how you spell that? I mean…” her Maw quickly backtracked, “… pronounce that?”

“Robert Lefarber,” Alice tested. “Robert Lafoger, Lafager, Lafageux. Damn those French names.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, honey.” Another cig from the carton, quick in the mouth, quick for a light.

“*Anyway*, the guy who owned the swamp.”

Maw almost swallowed her just lit cig. “*Matthew*??”

(to be continued)

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